best cheap/free scores 1.1

[ratdude747]

found a nice keyboard at goodwill today

It is a microsoft keyboard with fingerprint reader...

it is a newer usb wired keyboard... has multimedia keys galore, but best of all, it has a fingerprint reader:



(mine is missing the black palmrest)

It was in good shape and I paid $3 for it... and It works great!

I will use it on my main rig which could use a newer keyboard... and the fingerprint reader? nice.

[Dammon]

I found an original IBM model M keyboard with detachable ps/2 cable at a local thrift shop for only $2. Aside from a little dust, it works as well as the day it was made, which was almost 25 years ago.

[momaka]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

found a nice keyboard at goodwill today.

Looks good. I see it has (IMO) a properly sized Backspace button. I don't like keyboards that have a small Backspace because I do use it quite a lot and not just when typing.
Make sure to give it a good cleaning .

Not a best free score, but still okay - a few days ago, I found a big Panasonic CRT TV (probably 32" or 36") laying on it's front. The shell was open and the main board inside was broken in half, so I went back to my car, got some cutters and scavenged the boards from it. There's lots of good parts on them, including 2x 200v 330uF and 1x 200v 150uF Panasonic caps. I still have a number of cheap PSUs that need input filtering and whatnot, so this was an overall good find.

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by momaka

Looks good. I see it has (IMO) a properly sized Backspace button. I don't like keyboards that have a small Backspace because I do use it quite a lot and not just when typing.
Make sure to give it a good cleaning .

I know... one of the things I like about my Dell latitude d630... the keyboard is well sized.

I wiped it down with some cleaning wipes... nice and clean, nothing rattling under the keys.

now to get a new trackpad for my d63- so it has a fingerprint reader too... EDIT- for $30+, it ain't happening

[Ami Sapphire]

Bought 3 Pentium III-S 1.4GHz CPUs [SL5XL] as a lot for $9, and they all work. Used two of them in a recently set up server box, and that one will phase out the old eMachines tower I am currently using as a web server. The third one sits in my computer components collection.

Also, a Bluetooth module for my Mom's Dell Latitude D620 for $5. Before I had my Toshiba Satellite C655D-S5136 laptop with Windows 7 x64, I was using that Latitude. After installing the Bluetooth module, I happily listened to my music with one of my Bluetooth headsets on that computer.

And... a LiteOn SuperMulti desktop optical drive for 99 cents! The model number is SHW-160P6S10C. The tray sticks occasionally, but it didn't before I tampered with it. That drive is in my custom build server.

[Phaihn]

I got this laptop from someone at school this is what it looks like after i took it apart.

[ratdude747]

you're lucky...

anyway, I found a nice 18 range analog multimeter at radio shack for $11 on clearance. I was a discontinued model apparently, I got the last one in the store.

the nice thing is it uses standard size banana plugs so my PSU tester fits itl. sadly, the leads to it do not fit my digital meter (plugs slightly too big) or vce-versa (plugs too short). I guess I will have to buy new leads (to have one common set for the toolbox).

[Phaihn]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

you're lucky...

anyway, I found a nice 18 range analog multimeter at radio shack for $11 on clearance. I was a discontinued model apparently, I got the last one in the store.

the nice thing is it uses standard size banana plugs so my PSU tester fits itl. sadly, the leads to it do not fit my digital meter (plugs slightly too big) or vce-versa (plugs too short). I guess I will have to buy new leads (to have one common set for the toolbox).

it needs a new screen tho. basicly theres a black water effect on the top of the screen.
the person i had got it from had dropped at one point and is why i have it now ill prolly try to sell off any of the parts i can.

[c_hegge]

Does my HCG750 count? I got it for the cost of shipping from shovenose.

[Phaihn]

Originally Posted by c_hegge

Does my HCG750 count? I got it for the cost of shipping from shovenose.

i would think so.

[ratdude747]

today I found a masscool 3.5" hdd enclosure for $15 at a thrift store.

it had the original box and everthing... and unknown to the store, an 80gb hdd!

this one is aluminum bodied (plastic ends) and will do both ATA and SATA. it had the cables for both.

the box also had a molex to sata adapter, not needed as it had both molex and SATA pigtails in the box.

the thing was in great shape... I powered it on int he store and it spun up, no problems.

I bought it (and with my college ID got 15% off) and when I got home, here is what I found:

-it had a seagate 7200.7 80gb PATA hdd inside
-the drive had a bunch of dell and windows crap. nothing useful, so I delete the partition table and did a RW benchmark. I then formatted it to NTFS.

- the PCB soldering was less than good... there was an almost-solder bridge that I removed and I resoldered any bad looking joints.

-the power brick looks like junk. too light to be a paperweight. for now, it works, at my old house I have a compatible brick of better quality use

the drive is one of these:

http://www.masscool.com/product_deta...?pid=180&id=73

(note, contrary to the pics online, mine has vents in the back)

so for $13.5 (after 15% off), how did I do?

[370forlife]

Got a HP Compaq 8710p laptop from my friend for $50. Its in real good condition and is built like a tank. Has a 2.2Ghz Core 2 Duo T7500, 2GB Ram, and a Nvidia Quadro NVS 320M. It's a bit big, but I like it. It plays starcraft 2 on high settings. It needed a new battery, so I bought a genuine 12 cell HP battery and it has a slot on the bottom for a huge extended battery so I bought one of those (but the genuine HP ones were ~$300) so I bought an AGPtek one for about $50 and get 6 hours of run time out of both. Very happy.

[ratdude747]

benchmark on the drive:

[kc8adu]

about a week ago a shop went out of business.i know the owner of the building and he dropped by with 4 huge boxes of stuff.some half decent cb's,a box of new 40w pl-l cfl's,bunch of sams from the 60's,bunch of samsung lcd and plasma boards new in sealed boxes,and a huge pioneer elite reciever with its remote.weighs a ton with its copper chassis.nothing wrong i could find!got a $300 offer from a neighbor.SOLD!

[momaka]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

so for $13.5 (after 15% off), how did I do?

Not bad. The hard drive is what makes it all worth it IMO. Otherwise I can get new external HDD enclosures for not much more from Micro Center.

Originally Posted by kc8adu

and a huge pioneer elite reciever with its remote.weighs a ton with its copper chassis.nothing wrong i could find!got a $300 offer from a neighbor.SOLD!

Nice! Must have had a pretty beefy amp in it.

----
Today, I got a 40 GB and a 80 GB hard drives for free from work. My boss said "can you trash these for me" and I was like, "okay". Of course, I just set them aside and asked if I can have them, to which the answer was "sure, no problem".... me -->
The 40 GB is one of those slim Maxtors (DiamondMax Plus 8) that like to fail alot. I already have 2 of these: 1 failed and 1 still working with 0 bad sectors, both of which are from work.
The 80 GB is a Seagate 7200.7 PATA like Ratdude's. I think that one may have either bad sectors or is failing since I set it aside in January when I was refurbishing a lot of computers. I left it aside because for some reason this HDD only got imaged properly from the third try.

Maybe not best finds, but they should be good enough to test PCs with or bulk storage for junk files.

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by momaka

Not bad. The hard drive is what makes it all worth it IMO. Otherwise I can get new external HDD enclosures for not much more from Micro Center.


Nice! Must have had a pretty beefy amp in it.

----
Today, I got a 40 GB and a 80 GB hard drives for free from work. My boss said "can you trash these for me" and I was like, "okay". Of course, I just set them aside and asked if I can have them, to which the answer was "sure, no problem".... me -->
The 40 GB is one of those slim Maxtors (DiamondMax Plus 8) that like to fail alot. I already have 2 of these: 1 failed and 1 still working with 0 bad sectors, both of which are from work.
The 80 GB is a Seagate 7200.7 PATA like Ratdude's. I think that one may have either bad sectors or is failing since I set it aside in January when I was refurbishing a lot of computers. I left it aside because for some reason this HDD only got imaged properly from the third try.

Maybe not best finds, but they should be good enough to test PCs with or bulk storage for junk files.

I have one of those slim 40gb maxtors too... dead.

I have had 3 of those 7200.7 80gb PATA drives and one 160gb sata:

80gb PATA:

1. bought new as a gift (when I was in middle school). fried by a powmax power supply (years later I would find out why a-power and powmax were bad).

2. came from a HP evo d530, eventually made its way into a 700mhz emac. works great, no issues

3. came from the drive I got today. so far, no issues.

160gb SATA:

1. bought used form a local computer shop. mysteriously died months later.

edit- on the enclosure, it had a shapied out computer store price tag, which read $29.99. this is an aluminum shelled enclosure, if it means anything (and unlike the masscool aluminum 2.5" pata enclosure, this one decently made)

[ratdude747]

I swapped the 80gb drive for a WD 160gb caviar green I had in one of my boxes... more space and less heat.

New benchmark:

[shovenose]

Got a Panasonic Toughbook CF-28 for almost free! Ill post some pics of it later when I install an OS on it.

[c_hegge]

Oh My Goodness! A toughbook!! Good luck trying to destroy that. those things are indestructable

I got a FREE HP dv1000 (and no, it doesn't have nvidia graphics). only problem was the USB ports didn't work (which is why it was free). When I took it apart, they fell off the motherboard. 2 of the 3 work fine now after re-soldering them.

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by c_hegge

Oh My Goodness! A toughbook!! Good luck trying to destroy that. those things are indestructable

I got a FREE HP dv1000 (and no, it doesn't have nvidia graphics). only problem was the USB ports didn't work (which is why it was free). When I took it apart, they fell off the motherboard. 2 of the 3 work fine now after re-soldering them.

I hope it is not klunky like the nc6000... I got one of those free as well, dead with the MAX1987 issue. at least I got a 1gb PC2700 module out of it (and so I was able max out my old d400 to 2gb of RAM)